Let's get right to the point. What are we talking about? Well it's one of the big questions always asked when it comes to Linux Gaming. It's not just on Linux that this question has been debated in years past. So today we focus on comparing AMD with Nvidia for this OS and in relation to the gaming department.

To answer the question quickly, which GPU manufacturer is the best to use? The short answer right away is Nvidia. In this post I will explain why Nvidia is the best choice, providing information on AMDs issues and what to expect if you go with AMD. Also, don't forget that all this is subject to change, but we are measuring the two brands from what we have seen over the past year and evidence at 'This point in time', The order at which we will be talking about this is as follow.

1. Driver Differences
2. AMD Problems/Improvements
3. Nvidia Advantages


When it comes to gaming on Linux and depending on what GPU you go with, you have a few options. For both Nvidia and AMD you can go with the Proprietary drivers or the Open Source option provided by the community. In the case of Nvidia the Proprietary drivers are extremely superior to the Open Source alternative but in the case of AMD its the other way around. AMD and their Catalyst drivers are far behind and AMD themselves has not put a lot of effort into the ones they develop. The Open Source drivers provide a huge performance boost over the official ones from AMD directly. When it comes to the gaming department, AMD is pretty far behind, so if you are wanting to game on Linux and want the best support along with the least amount of headaches, Nvidia is your choice.


The second thing we will cover is problems with games and overall support for these GPUs when it comes to gaming on this OS. Over the past 1-2 years people have been having issues with may games it seems no matter what the OpenGL version the game requires, Linux Distro choice, game engine(s), developer, etc. Some game devs now refuse to support AMD right out of the gate and many people have seen a lack in performance as much as 40-70%. Plus some games just refusing to work at all. One of the biggest players in aiding AMD support has been Valve by helping these GPU users by adding better support for Source based games. On top of this, just recently there was a Kernel update that improved the power management system for AMD Radeon cards that did have a profound increase in performance. This update was included in Kernel version 3.13 that was released on Jan 19th 2014. They tested these changes with a simple game. The game that was chosen was Quake 3 Arena and the new power management changes for AMD Radeon cards via the 3.13 Linux Kernel now allowed these GPUs to finally manage to render Q3A at over 300 Frames Per Second which is just sad.

Another downfall to AMD is they don't code their drivers to support the enthusiasts or power users. They haven't added support and features that are a must have for these kinds of advanced users.  What I am referring to is features like manual card control or overclocking that Nvidia has been doing for the past year. Things that advanced users expect from high end card manufacturers. It has been discovered by many Linux gamers in the community that AMD is so poor in their official driver development that many people have had to use the Open Source drivers and are seeing much better results then with the official software.


Nvidia is always releasing new drivers to add features, bug fixes, support new chips/GPUs, and possible security fixes. Some features for example are support for GPU core and vRAM overclocking, as well as manual fan control and over-volting options. They make it incredibly easy to do manual overclocking, fan control, profile settings, etc. Plus what most games care about, is that it just works. As I previously mentioned that some devs have decided to drop AMD completely and I can't tell you how many time I have seen a forum posts in support sections for games from a Radeon user that is trying to fix tearing issues, lighting inconsistency, or just attempting to get a game to run period. Valve themselves via their SteamOS (right at release) only supported Nvidia and AMD was excluded. Not to say AMD is never going to be an option but the company is really going to have to see the value in putting more effort into developing for Linux directly for them to even be on par with Nvidia. For driver installation for a Nvidia GPU, its very simple. The different distros I tried installing on did not put up any fights at all. Those would include Arch, Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and Elementary. Even when it comes to overclocking, you just need to make a manual edit to the Xorg.conf file (via CoolBits) and you are good to go. For myself I have a GTX 560 Ti and was able to set a GPU offset of +95mhz and a vRAM offset of +400mhz with no issues at all. Also from my own experience, I have YET to come across any game or 3D accelerated application that has refused to work or had performance issues. Provided it was not a dependency based issue for 32bit binaries on a 64bit system. These issues were in relation to standalone games, not Steam if you are asking yourself this.

In short, this is all subject to change and we could see a improvement in AMD a month from now but if you want the best experience right from the start and want to play anything with little to no editing or fixing required, the best GPU manufacturer to go with is Nvidia. If you have ANY questions please feel free to PM me or leave a comment below. Thanks for reading and see you next post.

'Free' you later.

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